“Not an inspector,” Joel said. “That man has jurisdiction in all sixty isles. He wouldn’t come for nothing.” Joel noticed Principal York standing in the doorway to the office, Exton and Florence visible behind him. He seemed … troubled.
“Well, anyway,” Davis said. “About summer elective.”
“Yeah,” Joel said. “About that…”
“I, um.” Davis shuffled. “Joel, I’m not going to be spending the summer with you this year. It, uh, turns out I’m not free.”
“Not free? What does that mean?”
Davis took a deep breath. “Rose and I are going to be with the group Michael is taking this summer. To his summer home, up north.”
“You?” Joel said. “But … you’re not one of them. I mean, you’re just…” Like me.
“Michael is going to be an important man someday,” Davis said. “He knows my father has been preparing me for law school, and Michael is planning to go himself. He’ll want help, in the years to come. Someday, he’ll need good attorneys he can trust. He’ll be a knight-senator, you know.…”
“That’s … that’s great for you,” Joel said.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” Davis said, looking discomforted. “I’m sorry, Joel. I know this means you’ll spend the summer alone, but I have to go. This is a chance for me, a real chance to move up.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“You could ask him if you could come.…”
“I kind of already did.”
Davis winced. “Oh.”
Joel shrugged, trying to convey a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “He let me down easily.”
“He’s a classy guy,” Davis said. “I mean, you have to admit, everyone treats you pretty well here. You’ve got a good life, Joel. Nobody picks on you.”
That was true. He’d never suffered from bullying. The students at Armedius were too important to waste time bullying. If they didn’t like someone, they ostracized them. There were a dozen little proto-political factions on campus. Joel had never been a part of any of them, even the out-of-favor ones.
They probably felt they were doing him a favor. They treated him with civility, laughed with him. But they didn’t include him.
He’d have traded that for some good, old-fashioned bullying. At least that would mean someone considered him worth noticing or remembering.
“I’ve got to go,” Davis said. “Sorry.”
Joel nodded, and Davis and Rose jogged off to join a group gathering around Michael near the station.
With Davis gone, Joel really was going to be spending the summer alone. His grade was practically empty.
Joel hefted Professor Fitch’s books. He hadn’t meant to take them in the first place, but he had them, so he might as well put them to some use, as the library wouldn’t lend Rithmatic texts to ordinary students.
He went looking for a good place to read. And to think.
* * *
Several hours later, Joel was still reading beneath the shaded boughs of an out-of-the-way oak tree. He lowered his book and looked upward, peering through the branches of the tree toward the tiny shards of blue he could make out of the sky.
Unfortunately, the first of Fitch’s books had proven to be a dud—it was just a basic explanation of the four Rithmatic lines. Joel had seen Fitch loan it out to students who seemed to be struggling.
Fortunately, the second book was far more meaty. It was a recent publication; the most interesting chapter detailed the controversy surrounding a defensive circle Joel had never heard of before. Though a lot of the Rithmatic equations in the book were beyond Joel, he was able to understand the text’s arguments. It was engrossing enough that it had consumed him for a good while.
The further he read, the more he’d found himself thinking about his father. He remembered the strong man working late into the night, perfecting a new chalk formula. He remembered times his father had spent, an excited tremble to his voice, describing to the young Joel the most exciting Rithmatic duels in history.
It had been eight years. The pain of loss was still there. It never went away. It just got buried in time, like a rock slowly being covered over by dirt.
The sky was getting dark, nearly too dark for him to read, and the campus was growing still. Lights glowed in some of the lecture halls; many of them had upper stories to provide offices for professors and housing for their families. As Joel stood, he saw old Joseph—the groundskeeper—moving across the campus, winding each of the lanterns on the green in turn. The springworks within them began to whir, the lanterns flaring to life.